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Dementium: The Ward (DS)

Status: Stopped playing - Something better came along
I started playing this game on Wednesday 20 October, 2010  //  I stopped playing this game on: Wednesday 4 May, 2011
Current opinion of this game
Creepy and effective. Probably the only M-rated game for the DS? (well, there's the sequel too, I guess)

May 4, 2011 10:47:18 AM
I find it hard to imagine a DS game being creepy and scary. It's not about the platform per se, but rather about the context in which the games are played. Most of the creepy games I've played work because I can play them in the dark, headphones on, big screen, and so on. I usually play my DS on the (mostly) crowded train in broad daylight. Yes, I wear headphones, but the screens are kind of small.

Well, I was in a for a surprise with this game! I guess I would describe it as a first person Silent Hill. I mean that as a compliment, because the original Silent Hill creeped the hell out of me...and this game came pretty close to doing the same. I was mostly saved because I was playing on the train, which limited how long I could play, during the day AND, I was acutely aware that I was in a public place. I guess I made a conscious effort to avoid embarrassing myself by gasping out loud or that sort of thing...

Anyways...

The game isn't easy and curiously it suffers from something that really bugged me about Silent Hill: it's easy to paint yourself into a corner. Or at least I think I did. The game features a lot of backtracking (or it's easy to backtrack if you get lost and don't know what to do) with enemies that respawn. Ammo and health, however, do not respawn...so you can get to a point where you might not have enough ammo/health to, say, beat the next boss. In my case, I made it all the way to Chapter 7 (roughly halfway through the game, according to GameFaqs) before I got horribly turned around and confused...and haven't been able to take out some of the baddies. It didn't help either that I stopped playing for a few weeks and now I have no idea what I was trying to do, where to go, what the clues where, and so on. I guess at this point I feel like it's not worth the effort to get into the game again, so I'm putting it back on the shelf. I definitely enjoyed it though, and the change of pace from the usual DS fare was quite refreshing...


 
kudos for original design to Rodrigo Barria